


all the things you see

by soldierly



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Psychic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierly/pseuds/soldierly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean are bound by a curse as children, but that doesn't change who they are. Sam will still do anything to run from the life of a hunter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the things you see

It's been this way since they were kids.

Dean and Sam, Sam and Dean. Except more intense than that, more bone-deep and soul-stricken. John tells Dean, when he's too young to really understand, that he and Sammy are _special_ , that what they have is a gift. Even then, Dean can see the shadow in his dad's eyes, can hear the ugly untruth in his voice. John doesn't think it's special, but Dean does. He takes what his father says to him and he closes it into his chest, and from then on he knows that Sam is _his_.

And then, when he _is_ old enough to understand, to realize that brothers don't sleep in the same bed, don't _have_ to touch, don't have to feel each other so intensely that emotions are mirrored, that pain felt by one is felt by both, he knows they're different, and he doesn't care. They aren't normal, but it's not just the curse – they were never _going_ to be normal, not from the moment their mother died. This is just another shade of predestined strangeness.

Sammy is thirteen, the first time Dean touches him, touches him in a way he's thought about but never let himself. And then he's sixteen, leggy and coltish, when they _sleep_ together (and Dean remembers, when he's got Sam's wrists pinned and Sam's mouth is on his throat, that Sam was twelve when he asked why there were two kinds of sleeping), their bond pulsing with lightened strength, rebounding pleasure back and forth, an endless feedback loop.

Dean is twenty-two when Sam comes to him, wet-faced and red-eyed with clenched fists and gritted teeth, and says he can't do it anymore. They'll die, he says, both of them, because neither of them can stand being apart anymore, and in their line of work, it's not practical, not _possible_. Dean tells him to stay; this is not everything that Dean has ever known (he still remembers Mary, the way her hair smelled and the white of her favorite robe), but it is everything he wants.

 _It's everything_ , he says, and Sam shuts down. His end of the bond ices over and Dean's heart stutters, awkward and unsure without its other half.

Sam is eighteen and three days old when he steals money from under Dean's mattress and buys a beat-up Corolla. He packs his things into it in the middle of the night. Pointless, since Dean knows where he is, even with Sam tamping down on the bond, trying to force it away. Dean's chest aches as the Toyota's engine gargles and turns over.

Sam is halfway down the next street when Dean comes flying out from behind a house, barefoot and wild-eyed, his hair stuck up in unruly spikes, and slams his hands down on the hood of Sam's car.

"It's not," he says, and Sam stares. "It's not."

The bond unfurls slowly, opening to him, and Dean doesn't have to say any more. He slides into the passenger seat; Sam looks at him the way he does when he thinks Dean's doing something reckless. "I'm sure," Dean says, and Sam runs his long fingers over the back of Dean's hand.

"Stanford," Sam tells him, like Dean doesn't know.

"I know."

So they go.


End file.
